A Remedy Worse than the Disease
by O'Rinn Woodson
Summary: Bella is struck with a curse. Jasper does something about it.
1. Chapter 1

By the time Jasper finds her it's almost too late.

Unaccustomed to starring as the hero in the daily crises that seem to follow Bella wherever she goes, he's less prepared than Edward to deal with what he finds. And what he finds is something he never wanted to see. Not necessarily because there is a lack of desire on his part - he's a vampire, and such concepts as 'want' are not so much an exercise in 'if', as they are for humans, but a matter of how and when.

Perhaps that's why it is him they go to. He's already damned, so one more scratch on the bedpost won't raise anybody's eyebrows. Surely if Edward _were _here he'd be the designated savior. At least that's what Jasper is telling himself. He's less confident in his adopted brother than the others. Or less optimistic. What Edwards needs in life is not a half-mad moon girl with one foot in the grave, but an altar.

Really, he'd be much happier as a monk. Then he could direct his fanaticism and self-loathing into some more proactive pursuit than pining away for an unstable teenager. If Jasper were asked (not that he's been asked, mind you, or expects to be, on this topic or any other in the foreseeable future) he'd have counseled Edward to bite the girl already and be done with it. Bella wants to be a vampire, or a wolf, anything other than what she is. It's that transient Something Else that she wants and Edward has the ability to provide. So why not? She's mildly entertaining. And, apart from a disconcerting interest in dead things, she's relatively perceptive for a human. She could be useful. And isn't that the point?

No, the point is that Edward's not here.

The human's gone and got herself cursed and the one person most suitable for her at a time like this is most certainly not Jasper.

In Carlisle's house (it is always _Carlisle's_ house, make no mistake about that and Jasper never has, whatever genteel platitudes the doctor makes ) swarms fear, stress and, faintly within, _girl. _

This knowledge comes to Jasper in the most primal, basic terms. Once his brain registers the scent and the stark _feeling _of it, it's all he can think of. It's all he knows, all he will ever or want to. Edward claims Bella smells like flowers to him, fresh green things, open air and wide, blue spaces. Perhaps this is so.

Jasper cannot see how, when to him she is nowhere near so prosaic a concept. For him she is an embodiment of need. He _needs _her, as he once needed air, as he still needs blood, as he has never anything in his life. At least for the amount of time it takes him to register her existence. She is blood and warmth and softness over fragile, satisfyingly breakable bones. These are real, tangible things. Not ideas, not pretty. He knows what these things are.

He is not strong. His love for Alice is real, but always a little abstract. There are acts and words attached to the idea of love, and therefore he does them, and is not greatly inconvenienced in so doing. They make her happy and he very much likes Alice happy. Her emotions reflect onto him and he is allowed, through the privilege of their arrangement, to enjoy what he cannot experience on his own. Sometimes he wonders what it would be like if he could not sense the suffering and triumphs of others, what _he _would be like. If there is anything.

"I'm sorry," Alice says, but she opens the door anyway.

Jasper takes in a sharp breath and is almost drunk on it. As he had followed Alice up the stairs Bella's scent had grown stronger and Jasper's resolve weaker. Through the heady cloud of fresh, seventeen-year-old girl, he is suddenly, unrepentantly angry.

"How could you bring her here?" he hisses. It is betrayal of the worst kind. To know someone is weak, and to ignore that in favor of - what? hope? a misguided altruism? - strikes Jasper has the height of irresponsibility. If not callousness.

When Bella is not in Jasper's presence he is more or less okay. He walks a steady middle on the tightrope. During those times, all he has to concentrate on is not killing anyone else. Some days he almost believes he doesn't even want to, anymore. Those days are usually the most dangerous.

But to expose Bella to Jasper in this condition, in _such_ a condition as this, is not only unfair but outright sadistic. If Jasper did not sense Alice's distress, both for the girl on the bed and himself, he would not have imagined a day he could forgive her.

"We need your help," Alice says. "_She _needs your help."

Jasper disagrees. He disagrees very heartily, but only a part of him does. The rest of him has already made its mind up.

Beneath Bella's usual scent is a deeper, darker smell, so thick its almost a presence, wet and shiny on the shutter-stop reel of red images assaulting Jasper's mind. Having failed for the second time, it's almost a relief to come to this end. A confirmation of what Jasper has always known. Whatever the family tells him to his face, he knows how they really feel; and if he's ever in any doubt, Edward has never scrupled with the truth when Jasper sought it.

Still, Jasper gives it one last try. If for his own peace of mind if not the girl's. "Somebody else," he says, almost begs. "Somebody else, Alice. There has to be -"

Alice shakes her head. "Edward's not here. Emmett doesn't know if he _could_, you know, and… stop. And Rosalie," she pauses and Jasper wonders what she is omitting from the story, or editing. Rosalie is not shy about sharing her opinion and she has made her feelings known on the matter of Bella Swan. Likely as not she'd let this one die and declare them the better for it. Jasper is not sure he disagrees.

"Rosalie has declined," Alice says, apparently settling on the cold clarity of truth. Now is the time for it if ever.

"Carlisle, then," Jasper says. "He has the control and Esme won't make a fuss about it."

"Carlisle said it would not be possible, given Bella's special needs." Alice bites her lip, her wide consuming eyes turned to Jasper like the last well in a desert. From the bed Bella gives a mournful little scream to match Jasper's sentiments.

"He's still the town's best doctor and people ask more questions than they used to. He can't take care of the people and us and Bella, too. He said that because you're not, well -"

"Occupied?" Jasper supplies. "I might as well make myself useful, yes?"

His tone breaks Alice out of her descent into grief momentarily and her gaze on him hardens with her resolve. "Jasper Hale, you will do this. We - I - wouldn't ask it of you if I didn't think you could, if it wasn't the only option left." With that unforgiving fact hanging between them, she softens again. "Please," she says. "Bella is a sister to me and I love her."

"You don't know what you're asking," Jasper whispers furiously. "Otherwise you wouldn't have done it."

Alice nods, but not in agreement, merely in acceptance of the events that have brought them to this place. In some ways, she is well-suited to the mercurial interpretations of foresight, in others, she is maddeningly blasé to the point of uselessness. At least _pretend _that another option was looked for.

They are interrupted by another sound from Bella, this one thinner in strength, as if she is giving up. Jasper frowns.

"Please!" Alice says and literally pushes him into Bella's arms.

They both gasp, him in alarm and Bella in something decidedly more welcoming. Instinctively he tries to pull away but her arms have already wrapped around him like strangling vines and now she is everywhere. Her scent is filling him up, her warmth a living creature that electrics through his brain as bright orange wires. She is blood and sweat and deliciously sweet skin, the only things in this world that matter.

Her legs release from their stiffened angles and wrap clean as silk around his waist. With surprising strength she holds on to him and in a move that is wholly artificial and unbecoming of the Bella Jasper knows, she arches upwards, her body running rhythmically the length of his. She sighs in satisfaction and energy returns to her limbs. Her heart picks up speed from its gradually dwindling tempo.

Somebody's undressed her and beneath the sheet that slips from her waist she's entirely open to Jasper's gaze. Her dark hair is damp and sticks to her face with fever-sweat and her eyes are overly bright in their singular preoccupation of pain and need. She's beyond articulation, which means, among other unfortunate realities, that neither of them will even have the balm of telling each other she protested, later. Not that she will.

It's not egoism on Jasper's part, simply truth. She would let anyone touch her, now, if they were willing to give her what she needs. How much unluckier would she be were someone to touch without the intent to provide.

She's skinnier than he would have guessed, made up of sharp bones and awkward, haphazardly slashed lines. Her skin is naturally pale but has taken on a sicklier grayish pallor. Though her eyes are open Jasper can tell she isn't really seeing him, let alone understanding. He wants to say something, apologize, maybe, or offer some polite gentlemanly reticence at what he is about to do. But that, then, strikes him as a greater insult.

After all, there is still the matter of her body. Jasper is not a monk. He has never tried to be one. What he wants he takes, or used to. It is more natural that way, what he was made for, if he was made with any premeditation at all beyond idle diversion. He earned his keep once before and he will do so again, if that is required.

And Bella does require him. In this moment, he is everything to her. It's a very frightening power to have over someone, to need them. He had almost forgotten the sheer heady complacency of it. You are what others say you are. You are the sum of your actions and the results thereof. Jasper is very good at getting desired results.

"Please," Bella says. She tips her head back and whether it is deliberate or not her throat is where Jasper looks. She moves in a restless stream beneath him, tugging ineffectually first at his shirt and then, growing bolder, at his belt.

Startling Jasper by using his name, Bella latches on to it with ruthless purpose. "_Jasper_, please. I want you - I want you to help me. It's okay."

She might have convinced him, too, but there is so much confusion assaulting Jasper's senses that it is all he can do to keep his head above water. Pain, fear, revulsion, need. It's all there, but nothing resembling genuine affection or desire. Experience tells Jasper that you can and will do anything to simply make all of those feelings _stop. _She's doing nothing worth condemning her for. If only he could say the same.

More aware of Alice than he wants to be, Jasper eases himself slowly onto the bed. "Yes," Bella sighs, content as a cat as she lets her head fall back. The strain in her body morphs into something more fluid and inescapable. Without much of a fight left, Jasper realigns his body to more closely accommodate hers, biting his lip until he tastes blood.

And easily, too easily, they find a rhythm.

"Jasper, _yes._"

It's the curse. _It's the curse._ Closing his eyes, this is Jasper's last coherent thought before he gives up and consigns himself to the flames. It seems about as good as any other.


	2. Chapter 2

Bella's not in her right frame of mind and Jasper's not exactly winning any Rorschach tests these days, either. In a way, they are well suited to this sort of perverse parody of intimacy.

Jasper's always appreciated the more tangible aspects of beauty, finding them in women's faces, in their hands and smiles rather than in the dusty, earmarked pages of poetry books. It's not that he doesn't appreciate a pretty turn of phrase - he's Southern, after all, which practically makes it a prerequisite to knowing at least one Tennyson work - but if he's honest with himself such pursuits have always struck him as a little pretentious. It's why he left a comfortable career as an idle plantation's son to enter the War. He wanted to _do _something. Maybe even, God forbid, important.

And he did. Not on the fields, granted, but when Providence answers it's not expedient to question the form it comes in. Back then, that answer came in the form of a woman. Or that's what he thought she was. At the time.

For all her clumsiness Bella is a girl of small details. She will never be as aggressively sensual as the Amazonian Rosalie, or have Alice's French-like flare for style and an ability to always be charming. Bella is, frankly, a mess.

Jasper's not terribly surprised to find her in this situation, it's just that he'd rather imagined himself as one of the sideline observers than a participant. Good thing she doesn't seem to care much for his company, anyway, or this might be awkward. Good thing.

Jasper scrubs a hand over his mouth. "Bella," he says.

As a response, Bella hums and makes another snakelike undulation against his body. Deceptively pliant, her fingers curl into skeletal white claws around his biceps. If he were human he'd have marks.

Trying for focus, Jasper reaches out for Bella with his thoughts. If he can find any coherency, then he'll have a guide. To his disappointment, though not to his surprise, what he finds is, dominantly, _hunger_. It's a familiar sensation, not a _feeling_, more concrete than, say, sadness. It's based on the body. Bodies get hungry, they require matter for energy, they long; instinctive, it's the mind and all its mazelike circuitry that interferes with these very simple messages.

Bella is operating on a much simpler level. _Want_, so close she can taste it, feel it, almost the completion her body and the spell demands. Jasper is not wanted for his own self, and probably any one would do at this point. He's not offended. This is something he can understand, and really it makes it easier. What Bella needs he has. Infectious, Jasper cues into Bella's experiences and allows them to filter a little into his own. The assault of such simple, clear-cut demands makes it possible for Jasper to do what he must.

It was like that in the War, too. Both Wars. Men are buoyed up by other men, their strengths and doubts shared as though, in such extreme circumstances, a thread were created and on that thread a series of necessary emotions. Anger and fear, of course, but also - and this one Jasper never understood - lust. Some were satisfied with blood, others needed something else.

Struggling to find his own thoughts amongst the assailment of Bella's, he is relieved to find that he doesn't really want to hurt her more than he has to. His body responds, but whether that's influenced by Bella or his own less-than-noble desires, he can't tell. Glad that he can't tell, it will be easier to lie later.

Jasper tries again. "_Bella_."

He flicks hair off her face and is met with hot brown eyes. For a heart-flipping moment she almost seems to register him, and what Jasper sees in her face is nothing short of terror. For what's happening to her, the not knowing, how confused she must be; but she's also scared for him - scared _because _of him - above her and so close.

Then the spell reasserts itself and her gaze turns unfocused and glassy. She plucks restlessly at the buttons of his shirt before thrusting her hand through an opening and popping one loose. Her hand is aggressively exploratory and she presses and pinches at his skin, trying to get him closer.

He pulls the hand out from under his shirt and places it around his neck, encouraging her to do the same with the other. "This is what you want, isn't it?" he says. "Touch."

"Yes," Bella says, sounding grateful to be understood. How frustrated she must have been once the curse took hold, unable to articulate what she wanted, unable to just take it. She squeezes her legs tighter around his waist, almost in thanks.

Jasper analyzes his next move. It's been awhile since he's had to practice the art of objectivity. To do this, to actually _do _it, and achieve anything approximating a survivable outcome requires somebody to keep their head about them. Right now it seems a little unfair to expect that from Bella.

Stalling for time, Jasper absently makes shushing noises and runs his hands along Bella's sides. Relatively innocuous touches, and he knows they'll only satisfy for so long, but it quiets Bella for enough time to let him think.

This requires a level of control he's never really had. Only the notion that failure isn't an acceptable outcome - and that _is _familiar territory for him - keeps him from just walking out of the room.

In a detached curiosity, he watches his own hand travel back up to Bella's face, watches her turn into it, her eyes slitting closed in what deceptively looks like bliss.

Jasper knows how to make someone feel good. Again, it's not vanity that gives him confidence in his abilities, merely straightforward facts. It's a gift anybody could have, if they chose to exercise it - the gift of paying attention. He listens and watches to what his partner wants, what they like and what's better left for another night, for someone else. Everybody's different.

It's a paradox of his vampiric gifts that, granted unprecedented access to another creature's emotions, he inevitably winds up ignoring his own. So, while he's been told he's good at it, and seen the evidence of such praise for himself, he's never felt like a genuine participant in the act. He approaches any overture of intimacy with a combination of reflexive alarm at a potential threat allowed in the kill zone, suspicion of their motives, and analytical interest.

He has been told repeatedly by countless different people both human and not that his skills require little critique, but that he's a little cold, a little dull. No passion. To this he has no response other than polite agreement and a promise to do better. A virgin when he was turned, Maria taught him many things, but how to feel without the crutch of another body beside him was not one of them. What use was that?

Bella's just a girl, though. Jasper has thankfully not reached a point of such decrepit paranoia that he flinches in the face of someone who probably still has a Backstreet Boys poster tacked to her wall.

Although, it bears remembrance that Jasper carries more than a few scars from just such fresh-faced dolls as this. With vampires, size is no determination of strength or ability.

All this runs through Jasper's mind with enough time for him to come to and accept two conclusions. One, Bella will die, and soon. Two, he's just stupid enough to not let that happen.

Keeping his voice calm and soft, Jasper says, "Listen to me, Bella. Focus on my voice. I need you to do that. Do you think you can?" As he speaks he lowers his face so that his mouth is almost brushing her ear. She shivers and her chest rises up in an unreleased breath.

Nodding so vigorously she almost head-butts him, Jasper draws away to look at her. To say this is any form of consent would be a gross bastardization of what it means to make a choice, but it's good enough for Jasper.

"Good," he says. "I'm gonna help you out, make all the bad feelings go away."

Bella's eyes snap open like she's been slapped awake. "It _hurts_," she rattles out, paler now and shaking. "Oh God it hurts! Why -"

"I know," Jasper says. "We're gonna take care of that, and then you'll feel just like you again."

Lies, every word. He doesn't even know if it's himself he's trying to reassure or her. From his mind he takes an image - Alice, not standing behind him wide-eyed and stricken, smelling almost as heavily of fear as Bella, but Alice in a summer dress and sunbonnet, one hand on the brim to keep it in place as the wind tries to sweep it away. She is laughing at him, he doesn't remember what he said but it was probably something he didn't mean to be as funny as she's finding it. This image gives him an illusion of warmth, and from that enough clarity of thought to soothe Bella.

There are not many of these memories, and like a miser he keeps them close, never sharing. But 'desperate times' and all that trite. He lost the right to his own secrets a long time ago.

Jasper lets her draw him back down. His lips contact with her skin and he closes his eyes. Behind him, Alice slowly retreats, the door closing discreetly behind her to mark her absence. He half-wishes she would stay. Just to have somebody in proximity who is not entirely repulsed by him has been a nice change of pace these last few years. But if he wants to keep it that way, it's probably better if she stays away.

"Just us now," Jasper says. "You don't got to hold back."

With that license, Bella grips a fistful of his hair and redirects his mouth to hers. He's doing her more damage than she is him, but it's not for lack of trying. Her unskilled mouth presses against his, seeking admittance, teeth biting into his lower lip.

Palm flat against her cheek, he gently redirects her to a more moderate force. She's going to come out of this damaged enough, he'd like it if she doesn't look like she caught the bad end of a sledgehammer.

Despite his efforts to remain in the dubious safety of logic, it's hard not to be at least a little affected by her enthusiasm. If he couldn't feel her confusion and pain he might have even believed she actually wanted it. Which, of course, is part of the nature of the curse. It is a joke, a bad joke, and whoever did it isn't terribly bright.

For a few minutes she struggles along, trying to get him to match her pace tooth for tooth, but when Jasper proves resolute, she allows him to take over. "There now," he soothes, kissing the corner of her mouth. "No sense in making it worse than it has to be."

"Hmph!" Bella says. Somehow he suspects that would be her response were she fully in possession of her faculties, too.

He strokes her belly and the delineation of her ribs. He kisses her mouth, her throat, and if he lingers overlong on her pulse point, well, no one's going to accuse him of it tomorrow. All the while he infuses Bella with as many good feelings as he can, as he many as he has. It's not enough, but it takes the edge off.

Slipping down so that his knees rest on the floor, he hooks his hands around Bella's knees and pulls her towards him.

"What -" Lulled by Jasper's ministrations, Bella snaps back to attention, lurching up in cartoon fashion, eyes wide. Despite the circumstances, Jasper can't not find it endearingly comical. Not much in the way of experience, then, if she can't figure out what he means in this position.

"What are you doing?" Bella pushes the curtain of hair off her flushed face and looks down at him, blinking owlishly.

With one hand Jasper pushes her back onto the bed. "What I said I'd do," he says, kissing her stomach. He runs his hands down her thighs, up and down, up and down, until his touch brings drowsy compliancy to Bella again. Unfair, but then Jasper's never scrupled to take advantage when it's presented to him. How else do you become the right hand to the victor of the Vampire Wars? Or do anything else, for that matter. No partnership is ever truly equal.

Bella writhes under his hands. Jasper watches her closely for any sign of discomfort or shyness. She _would _be shy, if he were dealing with a Bella operating under her own mind. If this were another time, if he were someone else, most of the work would be in getting her to open enough to actually enjoy what was being done to her.

But then perhaps not. She has surprised him enough times - no easy feat with more than two civil wars and 160 years under his belt - for him to have sufficient respect for her ability to keep men guessing. There's a talent in that, though with Bella it's mostly artless.

This is not the 'real' Bella, of that he's sure, for the simple reason that she'd never be caught dead in his bed, promise of an afterlife on earth or no.

As Jasper tastes her for the first time she falls stone quiet, ramrod still, reminding Jasper of a rabbit when the shadow of a hawk flies over. Given the amount of urgency she's been telegraphing with her body for the last half hour, it's an unexpected about-face. But it's too late now.

Jasper kisses the inside of her thigh and breathes her in. She's delicious, as the last feast is to a condemned man, and the knowledge that she is literally seconds away from death makes for a disturbing attraction. Jasper might walk and talk like a man but he isn't one. All the tiresome charades, the self-edifying rituals he goes through each day to employ a convincing act - that of Jasper Whitlock-Hale-whatever-they-want-to-call-him-this-year - seems to fall away in the light of something so basic and necessary as Bella's life.

It's just the two of them. And a very thin line.


	3. Chapter 3

Gray morning light creeps into the room when Bella finally collapses, exhausted and replete. She gives one satisfying hum before her eyes flutter to rest over still-bright cheeks and she turns onto her side, hugging herself into a coma-like torpor. Her heartbeat thumps steadily, no longer a frantic drum roll of panic and demand.

Jasper lets his head rest on her thigh. He can still feel where she pulled at his hair and the back of his neck with her nails, needlelike sense-memory pricks of heat. Riding the downward fall of adrenaline rush, he's lulled into the closest state of unconsciousness he's been able to achieve since dying. Sometimes, when things get bad, he'll let go entirely and just… drift. If he's around Alice it's usually a safe enough diversion. She doesn't try to manipulate her own emotions to control him. Not yet, anyway.

_Soft_. He's getting soft here. The illusion of sanctuary will get him killed.

He accepts the hypocrisy of his self-possessiveness. So adept at yielding others to his persuasion, he has an abhorrent intolerance of anyone attempting the same on him. Nobody grasps the immutable cacophony that assaults his senses, nobody except, perhaps, Edward. Jasper's never asked him how he deals with it; the answer he suspects is somewhere between 'badly' and 'not at all.'

As a byproduct of his own gift, Edward is deeply mistrustful of all. Not only of humans, whom he scarcely condescended to notice before the earnest Miss Swan stumbled into his midst, but of his own kind, as well. People lie to him without meaning to lie, and because Edward either can't or won't ignore the secrets of others as any decent vampire would, he's condemned himself to a lifetime of second-guessing.

You would think Bella's immunity to his telepathy would be a godsend to him. Then he could actually get down to the business of getting to the know the girl through traditional channels of conversation, like everybody else. But no. Bella's reticence drives him to distraction. She's not a girl to him but a puzzle, one that, having figured out, will no longer retain his interest. If Bella was more aware of her own power to disarm she could use that to keep him. She does not, however, strike Jasper as the sort of femme fatale capable of such deception. You have to have confidence for that, and a certain disregard for your own humanity.

Jasper can still taste her. Such a sweet, crazy girl. He wouldn't think the less of her if this whole ordeal sent her straight into never-never land for good. Then she could _really _call herself one of the family.

He wants nothing more than to leave the room, which now smells like sex and girl and is distracting Jasper more from any attempt at more refined sensibilities. The whole thing was not terribly sexy on any level, but there's no denying Bella possesses a redoubtable attraction for their kind. She's meantto be one of them. Though he doesn't want to trench into the murky realm of Alice's, he would even consider using the term 'destined' for it.

The girl has everything going for, a loving if unsure father, a bevy of friends and admirers, enough intelligence to make it in this world - hell, she has her own damn truck. That she still weighs those as _less than _an uncertain fate with Edward Cullen is testimony enough.

Edward says she's not capable of making such a decision at her age, that she's not informed. Jasper's response to that, if nonverbal but still heard, was _'Well, then, fucking inform her.' _Take her on a hunt. Show her the slums in Seattle where cast-out vampires rely on equally strung-out human junkies. Let Carlisle tell her a few bedtimes stories about the Volturi. But give the girl some idea other than vague testimonies of damnation and the preserving of one's hypothetical soul. Who's to say as a human you were any saintlier? Jasper's seen children try to kill each other in the streets for a piece of sewage-sopped bread. And the tall people just keep walking.

Besides, Bella is seventeen. In Jasper's day that was old enough for marriage, motherhood and widow's weeds. When the War came there were plenty of girls who experienced all three in a year, and they could still smile and dance for the soldiers at a ball.

Times are different.

Bella frowns in her sleep, giving a sharp head turn to the side as if trying to avoid a bothersome fly. She does not look peaceful. This one's been through the wringer tonight and she looks it, but she's never struck Jasper as being a generally peaceful person. Most teenagers are an insecure, hostile bundle of nerves, and Bella's certainly that; but she's also curiously subdued. Keeps her cards close to her chest.

Jasper's never liked her eyes. Too big. And she's too quiet. It makes for a bad combination.

He props his head up on one hand and travels his gaze the length of her body. Bella starts to snore. "Got me in the trenches this time, don't you, darlin'?" he murmurs. "Just when I was figuring I'd about outstayed my welcome."

The idea of leaving the Cullens was one he entertained with no shortage of focus or creativity. Some days he visualizes just walking out the front door with nothing on his back but a glare, other days he imagines laying waste to the whole forsaken town. Either due to foresight or her own feminine intuition Alice had sensed this notion from him shortly after Jasper had been put on probationary status as a member of the Cullen clan. _'Promise me you won't just leave? Can I have that from you, at least?' _

That and everything else he owns, but it won't keep him.

Downstairs, the sink rattles. Sometimes it will make a sound like a great sea creature gulping and Jasper imagines it is indeed alive, or that a goblin lives within the detergent-limed depths. Scientists can't determine if a virus is a living thing or not and there's amoebas on Mars. Is Jasper alive? There are criteria to classify life from not, and by their standards he is not. But the rules of science change with the men who make them.

Physically, he has done very little exercise tonight. Bella was literally begging for it, and he did no more than provide her with enough stimulus to satisfy the spell's demands. _No more. _That is his mantra. Just this much and _no more. _The self-delusion of addicts everywhere.

The rest of the family has gone from the house except Esme. How they managed that without his noticing Jasper will attend to later. In a dream state, Bella, while not calm, is less of a distraction. Helps that she's not walking around waving her scent in his face and giving him those doe eyes. She always looks at him like she's expecting an answer. Only Jasper has no idea what she has asked him.

Jasper gets up from the bed and goes downstairs. His shirt's askew and he discovers, thankfully before reaching Esme, that Bella had somehow managed to unbuckle his belt and his Levi's are in danger of slipping. Did she use her _feet_?

Esme is puttering in the kitchen, as usual. She's either to be found there or in the east wing where Carlisle's set up a kind of indoor greenhouse for her. She seems to enjoy the playacting of domesticity. One and all, the Cullens miss their humanity to varying degrees. Emmett is the most well-adjusted but that's Emmett, easy to please and just as generous in return.

Jasper doesn't miss his humanity. If Maria hadn't killed it she would have killed him. Permanently. He regrets what he has done - not all of which was in the name of victory - but he does not apologize for surviving. Nobody asks him if he would do it the same if he had the chance.

Esme stops her attempts to fluff up a wilting orchid and smiles at him. It always startles Jasper with how genuine her smiles are and he has to fight the urge to glance behind his shoulder to see who she's directing it at.

"Is Bella well?" she asks, as though it were any other day.

"For now." Jasper sits at the counter and for a moment they both stare at the orchid. A deep purple hue with vibrant pinks exploding from the middle. "Where did you get this one?" he asks.

"Carlisle stopped at the nursery and picked it up for me. Isn't it the loveliest color? I don't know why it insists on struggling on so."

Jasper sees no point in theorizing on the obvious. "Perhaps it's not the time for it," he says, softly.

Esme is a true lady in the grand tradition of ladies. Unfailingly thoughtful, gentle, and so bland as to fade into the wall, she is the least offensive to Jasper's sensibilities. But then he has no strong opinion of her, either. Her mothering attempts make him uncomfortable - his own mother was no great arbiter of the maternal image - and to her credit she ceased in such overtures at once. Since then they have found an accord more like that of peers.

Forks in all its peculiarities keeps Carlisle busy and Esme, naturally shy, does not make easy friends. But she gets lonely. Jasper provides enough of a diversion with no untoward exertion on her part.

And Esme has never projected anything but aloof kindness towards him, so it's an even exchange.

She plays with the orchid before letting her hands come to rest on the countertop. "I am sorry, Jasper," she sighs. "Poor girl."

Wordless, Jasper nods. "Do we know who did it?" Might as well get to brass tacks. Retribution is required. Bella is considered by majority vote to be an honorary Cullen, and any hit on the clan is a hit on them all. Any sign of weakness and the wolves will come out looking for blood. And not necessarily from La Push. Anyway, it'd be a happy diversion for Jasper.

"No, I'm afraid. I have my own theories," she smiles diffidently as if to apologize for her presumption, "but nothing concrete yet. Carlisle's gone to Calgary for answers."

"And what the hell do you think he'll find in Canada?" Jasper says. "He's needed here. This isn't an accident, it's premeditated and by someone with connections."

"Yes," is all Esme says.

His outburst had startled her. He sighs.

"Sorry." Running a hand through his hair, he says, "It was not a good night."

Esme makes an aborted attempt to touch his arm before thinking better on it. "Yes," she says again. She curls her fingers into a loose fist and contemplates the grain on the countertop. "I think," she starts then stops, biting her lip. Then, "I do think this does not have to be the disaster we are all expecting it to be. Bella is a strong girl. She can have a life after this. She -"

Jasper makes a noise of disgust. "There is no 'after.' It's permanent. And unpredictable. Magic," he says, doing nothing to alleviate his tone of contempt, "you don't play around with that unless you got no options left, or you're crazy. Even people who know what they're doing mess it up."

"And you know much about this sort of thing, do you?" Esme asks curiously.

Oh, he's not going down that road. "Maybe." He shrugs. "Once upon a time."

Proving herself more sensible than her ill-gotten kin, Esme lets the matter drop.

"Bella will be hungry when she wakes, I'm sure," she says, perking up. Galvanized into action, she reaches for a pad and pen. "I'll just run to the market and get a few things for her. What do you suppose she'd like?"

"I haven't the slightest idea, Esme."

"Well, what do they eat at the school?"

"I try not to focus on it."

Esme makes a 'hmm' noise and taps the pen against her chin. "Perhaps some fruit? Yes, she seems like a girl who enjoys her fruit."

Jasper almost asks her what made her come to this conclusion but realizes he does not in fact care. Still, she's not got a bad idea. "Maybe something a little more substantial," he says. "Protein."

"Ah, yes, yes." Esme's pen scribbles across the page. "I'll make a real meal of it. Some dessert, too. A nice black German chocolate cake. She's too skinny. Her father probably doesn't know much in the way of cooking." Pleased to have something to do and doubtless a reason to escape Jasper's morbidity, she tears off the page and exits in a flurry of cardamom and orchid.

She doesn't need to write anything down to remember it. Is the whole house mad?

Jasper closes his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose. His hands smell like Bella. He made her come with his mouth and, when that wasn't enough, with his fingers. After a while he'd wondered if that really wasn't going to satisfy the spell and he was going to have to do what he knows he'll have to, anyway.

He tries not to give more than he has to, as a rule.

Upstairs, there as an explosion of fear, pain, and lust. Then the crying starts. Bella is awake.


End file.
